WARB BANKS ON SUCCESS

LAST time Queens Park Rangers got to the quarter-finals of the League Cup Mark Warburton was working as a trader in the City of London.

Tonight the 59-year-old (above) is in charge of a QPR team bidding to reach that stage of the competition for the first time in 23 years. The Championship high-fliers meet League One promotioncontenders Sunderland at the Kiyan Prince Foundation Stadium with a place in the last eight at stake.

Former Brentford, Rangers and Nottingham Forest manager Warburton only took up coaching in 2006 after leaving his city-slicker position.

He said: “In 1989 I was working in the City for a Finnish bank and playing semi-pro football for Boreham Wood.

“I loved it. It compared with my current world in terms of the teamwork, competitiveness, the pressure involved.

“The dealing room is just like the dressing room.”

The former Leicester youth player added: “I remember getting a clip round the ear from Jock Wallace at Leicester as a 15-year-old. Then in 2015 I found myself working in the manager’s office at Rangers underneath his picture!”

Then in the old Division One in January 1989, QPR, under Trevor Francis, lost 5-2 to Brian Clough’s Nottingham Forest in their quarter-final at the City Ground.

QPR now lie seventh in the Championship, and only three days after they face Sunderland, meet Forest in a crunch league game at home on Friday.

Warburton, whose side turfed out Everton in the third round, admitted he will rotate his squad but insisted: “These are the games the boys want to play in.

“If we can get in the hat for the last eight, get another Premier League club down here, it would be great.”